First Stab at the Site Design

Concept: The design idea focuses on how the process of food and art production occur on site and create interactive spaces for residents and visitors to exchange ideas and products. I think this could be emphasized further in my thesis project in terms of the actual building design, making it very clear how the massing of the scheme works to bring out this idea in an interesting way.

Urbanism: The project design is emphasizing a connection to the larger urban vision by maximizing the density on the site, utilizing the strong corners of urban retail, and keeping the building heights at a reasonable scale to the existing buildings around the site. The large boardwalk and public plaza I am proposing responds to the social aspect of the project, reaffirming the fact that this site will be a great place for gathering singles, families, and elderly.

Project Development: The program needs to be altered to adapt to a larger scale, adding retail at the ground floor as well as an increase in housing. The emphasis of my thesis project will be on designing the urban agriculture, art center, restaurant, and gallery spaces.

Sustainability: I need to further investigate the sustainability aspect to this project, but I am interested in looking at the full cycle of where food goes on the site. There could be a way composting fuels heat for the building?

Next Steps: The part of my scheme that seems most successful is in keeping the emphasis horizontal in a landscape-like way to produce food. The boardwalk connection to the farmers market and the solar orientation of the buildings seem like elements that work well, but I need to see exactly how the shading of surrounding structures will affect this.

The next step will be to zoom in to what I am truly passionate about for the project, and to research it. For me, this means figuring out exactly how to grow food, how to sell it, how it is recycled, composted, stored, etc. and understand how this process can work for a resident of this complex as well as someone working for a restaurant harvesting food on site. I also plan to investigate the way art is produced in the same way, and to see how these processes can interact with outdoor spaces.